Phoenix Blood (Old School Book 1)

by Jenny Schwartz

“Maybe I should drive?” he suggested.

  She checked the dashboard and reduced her speed. She didn’t so much as glance at him. “I want to help you, not be a burden.”

  He gave her the truth. “You are the best thing that ever happened to me. I feel blessed beyond what I deserve to have you with me at this time.”

  “I don’t want to watch you die,” she wailed.

  The pain in her voice cut him. “Take the next exit,” he said urgently.

  She shook her head, but when a sob escaped her, she swore, and did as he’d asked. She parked at the edge of a truck stop.

  “I’ve been selfish.” He unbuckled his seatbelt and walked around to the driver’s door, opening it to reach across and undo her seatbelt. Her scent filled his lungs and the tears shimmering in her hazel eyes hurt his heart. “You don’t have to share this last week with me. I can keep you safe another way.” He’d hire people. He’d follow her. He’d—

  She hit him. It wasn’t a girly hit, either. She punched his shoulder. “Don’t you dare try to leave me!”

  “Sadie.” Her tears were killing him. He hugged her to him and she swiveled awkwardly in the driver’s seat and buried her face against his throat.

  “Don’t you dare leave me.”

  He couldn’t promise that.

  “I will find someone who can help you. I will.”

  He felt her magic surge.

  “Marcus?” She straightened, flattening one hand on his chest, over his heart.

  Despite himself, despite knowing that drinking raw phoenix blood was a death sentence, his heart jolted. Could she have found a cure for him?

  “My magic finds you as the cure for the fever in your blood.”

  Disappointment seemed to release extra agony into his bones, but he kept his voice and hands steady. “Scoot over and I’ll drive.”

  She curled her fingers into his shirt as she frowned at him. “You can heal yourself. The cure is inside you.”

  “Uh huh. Maybe you’d better get out and walk around. That cup holder is awkward.” He lifted her out of the truck.

  “You have to have faith, Marcus.” She held onto him. “You have to believe that you can get better.”

  Karma chose that moment to fly out the open driver’s door.

  He closed his eyes at the flutter of golden tail feathers. He could “cure” himself, if he imprisoned and bled Karma.

  “Oh,” Sadie said, soft and sad.

  He opened his eyes to see her gazing after Karma. “I can’t,” he said finally. “I have to let Karma go.”

  “There must be another solution,” Sadie insisted.

  He leaned back against the truck and drew her against him. She felt right in his arms. “Be happy for me, beautiful. This is good. If I can see you and Karma safe, I’ll be content.”

  “You ask for too little,” she said angrily, and when she stretched up and kissed him, her kiss was angry, too.

  He’d take her kisses in any form and flavor. He hugged her close and didn’t notice when the fire in his bones eased.

  Karma flew back squawking and he broke off the kiss. He’d never heard that noise from the phoenix before. She sounded panicked. “Into the truck.” He pushed Sadie inside the warded truck and turned, stretching out his senses to identify any magic around them. Karma perched on the roof of the truck, head swiveling, searching.

  From the north, a wolf howled.

  “There aren’t any wolves in Oklahoma,” Sadie said from inside the truck.

  Nor was this one native to Oklahoma. “Keep the windows and doors closed. Drive. I’ll catch up with you.” He transformed into a griffin.

  Her mouth closed on whatever argument she’d been about to put forward. She put the truck in gear and headed back to the highway.

  He leapt into the air.

  Karma flew with him. A bird of paradise would never have been able to match his speed, but Karma only appeared to be an ordinary bird. The phoenix flew on his right, swift and terrible, wrapped in an ominous aura.

  Flying was a strange experience, natural in his griffin form, but incomprehensible to his human mind. He had to release conscious control of his body and trust in the griffin’s instincts.

  The howl came again. Sadie had been half right to recognize a wolf’s howl, but from the power of the challenge and the distance it carried, this was no mere wolf. A werewolf was calling the hunt.

  Sadie tried to drive, study the sky and panic—no, not panic. She couldn’t afford to panic. A wolf’s howl was completely incongruous to the I-40 in the twenty first century, and yet, the howl had meant something to Marcus. He’d transformed into a griffin and left her. What did he expect to find? A werewolf? “Please, no.”

  But in the last few days, so many impossible things had come true.

  She frowned around at the traffic surrounding her. The ward on the truck prevented surveillance, but for everyone’s safety, the truck had to be visible to other drivers on the road. If a Stag mercenary was near enough, he or she could see her.

  How do you tell if someone’s following you? Everyone was speeding in the same direction on the highway.

  But at such a high speed and in such a public space, it wasn’t safe to attack her. Was that why Marcus had ordered her to drive?

  Karma had gone with him. The phoenix had squawked and dived for them before the wolf howled. What had the bird seen or sensed?

  So many questions. So much fear—for Marcus.

  “Breathe. Just breathe. Drive safely.” There was nothing else she could do.

  Well, she could worry. If her guess was accurate, Marcus had transformed into a griffin and flown off to confront a werewolf. What else would howl so loudly across the miles?

  Seth Bentham had warned them that morning that a wizard called Nelson Davies was after Marcus, and the amulet hanging around Sadie’s neck was Nelson’s excuse to attack.

  Magic was a rarity among humans. Among those who did possess magic, wizardry was the most common talent. It was an ability to craft and cast spells. Sadie’s magic had a single purpose, to find things. Marcus should have had a sole talent, telekinesis. The fact that he could also set wards, identity other magic users’ signatures, and transform into a griffin was an anomaly.

  Wizards cast spells. Street wizards were the least powerful. They cast minor spells that were little more than sleight of hand or mind tricks. More powerful wizards could cast stronger spells, but they tended to specialize. Olga Fisher, who’d been head girl at Minervalle Hall, four years older than Sadie and still scary even now when they were both adults, specialized in enchanting objects. She’d once made everyone gasp and laugh by causing a suit of armor that stood in the lobby of the school’s main building to lead a conga-line dance one winter’s night.

  Other wizards chose to specialize in more brutal spells.

  Werewolves weren’t born or changed by a bite. Wizards could master a spell that transformed them into a wolf or worse—Sadie had seen a sketch in a nineteenth century book—they could hold an in-between form that was both human and beast, and lethal.

  At least Marcus wouldn’t have to engage with the werewolf wizard. Marcus could use his telekinesis from a distance.

  The werewolf in full wolf form raced along the side of the road, its giant strides eating up the distance, closing in on the I-40. It was as big as, and far more dangerous than, many of the cars on the road. Its coat was brindled with a scarred right flank. Nelson Davies.

  Marcus dived down.

  The werewolf sensed his attack. Nelson glanced up, saw Marcus and dodged around a speeding truck. That all the traffic flowed as if nothing out of the ordinary was happening told Marcus that Nelson was glamoured.

  So was he.

  When they fought, no one would notice them.

  And they would fight. Marcus had learned in the Arena that his telekinesis couldn’t touch the wizard while he was in his werewolf form. Perhaps because the form was created and held by magic, it rebuffed Marcus’s telekinesis. In
the Arena, Marcus had been forced to confront Nelson’s half man, half beast form with ordinary human skills.

  Nelson had been overly confident, then. Cocky. He’d believed that with his telekinetic talent rendered impotent, Marcus would be easy meat.

  But Marcus had never wanted to use telekinesis to maim and kill. That he’d done so a couple of times had earned him a reputation as a ruthless killer. The terror of knowing that you faced a man who could kill you with a thought had kept a number of fighters out of the Arena.

  Nelson had believed he was invincible. He hadn’t understood that Marcus’s grandfather had torn everything from Marcus, leaving him with an emptiness that he’d filled with training. Marcus had drilled for hours every day in lesser known martial arts. He’d learned how to see and use against an opponent their slightest movement.

  Marcus had endured Nelson’s teeth and claws, and he’d used the fractional top-heaviness of the wizard’s unnatural half-form body against Nelson. He’d toppled the werewolf and stomped on his windpipe. Nelson could have fought on, but he’d panicked. He’d slapped the ground, signaling his surrender. Emergency medical personnel had rushed in to cut Nelson’s trachea and insert a tube. The sound of that whistling breathing had lingered in Marcus’s ears as he walked out of the Arena, refusing the medics’ offer to clean and stitch his wounds.

  Nelson had lost face that day. He’d recovered and killed a man the next time he entered the Arena, refusing to show the mercy Marcus had granted him.

  He’d become an enemy, and guided by the old aphorism know your enemy, Marcus had investigated Nelson’s background. The wizard was the only member of his family to possess magic. His parents were high school teachers, his sister and brother respectively a child care manager and a policeman. They were active in their church and in local sports. Nelson was the anomaly. Average in height and looks, he was distinguished by the avidity in his eyes.

  Sociopath. It was beyond Nelson to relate to his family or anyone. He could only manipulate them, and he did so, driven by a lust for power. He hated Marcus because Marcus had beaten him. Nelson had entered the Arena convinced by his own narcissism that victory was inevitable.

  He was a monster in a truer sense than the werewolf form he conjured.

  Now, as a werewolf, he bounded across the lanes of traffic. He couldn’t possibly know that Marcus was the griffin, but he understood that it was a threat. He left the road, dashing across open ground.

  Marcus tucked his wings, instinctively going into a dive. He was unsure how a griffin fought, but he was willing to learn. His lion claws raked Nelson’s back.

  The werewolf flung itself sideways, twisted and bit.

  Clumsy, clumsy, clumsy. As a griffin, Marcus was too slow. His front left paw was deeply punctured by Nelson’s teeth before he wrenched free, his eagle wings lifting him up. Below him were empty fields where his wings would give him an advantage. Nelson recognized that fact, too, and ran back toward the city and buildings.

  Since Marcus didn’t trust his maneuverability or reflexes, he went for brute force. He angled around, built up speed and hit Nelson hard.

  The werewolf somersaulted and came out of the tumble in the nightmare half-form of man and beast. A wolf’s head on a man’s furred body, the torso wider than human, his feet tearing the ground as paws. He tipped his head back, sighted Marcus in griffin form, and howled.

  You will die alone, the howl promised. Alone-alone-lone. It was a wolf’s howl, stirring a primitive human fear.

  But just now, Marcus was a griffin. A shriek ripped out of his eagle’s throat, a hoarse terrifying demand that those listening hurry to hide because death was hunting from the air.

  Marcus banked and circled. It seemed he and Nelson shared a problem. Their transformed bodies compelled certain instinctive behaviors.

  Nelson wouldn’t have wanted to alert Marcus to his presence by howling, but the werewolf form had its own drives. Then, again, perhaps Nelson had wanted Marcus to know he was coming. Nelson had no idea that Marcus could transform into a griffin and freely track him.

  The griffin form presented its own problems. The critical point for Marcus to remember was that Nelson had had years to learn to work with or circumvent the instincts of his werewolf, whereas Marcus had only just acquired his griffin body. Its unknown instincts could be his death.

  Marcus circled and thought, tracking Nelson as the werewolf loped parallel to the highway. Did Nelson know that Sadie and the amulet were driving along the I-40 or was the wizard merely guessing? A guess seemed awfully reckless. But if Nelson knew where the amulet was, then somehow he must have broken the ward on the truck that enabled the vehicle to evade all surveillance.

  Unless Nelson was smart enough to track the ward itself. For that, he’d have had to work with someone else, someone who could see magical signatures and track Marcus’s moving ward. If Nelson had a partner…

  Marcus turned away from the werewolf, determined to check on Sadie who—damn him—he’d left alone.

  From nowhere, Karma flew into his face, wings flapping and squawking imperatively. She was obviously blocking him, saying as clearly as bird language allowed, “Not that way.”

  A fury of worry gripped him. He needed to see that Sadie was okay. Nelson wasn’t an immediate threat.

  Karma kept diving at him, nearly blinding him.

  He tried to duck and weave around her. His own maneuvers destabilized him. He rolled, noted the fast-approaching ground, and steadied himself automatically, even as he jolted out of panic into the frozen calculation he’d used in the Arena.

  Nelson had vanished.

  A werewolf couldn’t just vanish. The ground was open, fields stood green but empty, untended and rank with weeds. There were no trees big enough and close enough to hide Nelson either as man or wolf.

  Marcus flew along the ground, trying to scent for Nelson, trying to multitask and track for his magical signature. Both ended at the edge of a narrow country road.

  There was a dark blue truck driving away from the highway. Had it been parked by the empty field? Had he ignored it before, solely interested in pursuing Nelson?

  Concern for Sadie demanded that he head for the highway, but in between, Karma hovered, obviously determined to herd him to Nelson. He could ignored the phoenix or trust her instincts that Nelson remained the greater threat.

  I hope you’re right, Karma.

  Marcus flew fast away from the highway, overtaking the truck before turning to face it.

  Nelson was its driver and sole occupant. So the bastard had planned this. Why? For what purpose?

  One way or another, Marcus was going to get some answers and send a message. He gathered his telekinetic magic and slammed it at the truck.

  Chapter 11

  Sadie jumped and the steering wheel slipped in her sweaty hands. “Phone.” It could be Marcus’s dad calling or it could be Marcus himself. The latter thought had her holding the wheel one-handed and reaching to the glovebox to fumble blindly in it. She felt the phone. It slipped through her fingers, but fortunately, not onto the floor. She fumbled some more in the glovebox and finally grasped it. “Hello?”

  “Sadie?”

  Recognizing Vanessa’s voice triggered a weird combination of relief and disappointment. Sadie had wanted it to be Marcus. Even as she drove and talked, she scanned the sky for the sight of a griffin. “Hi, Van, I’m alone so you can speak freely.”

  Sadie blinked as she processed her own statement. Vanessa wasn’t the only one who could speak freely. Without Marcus to overhear, she could ask for help—not for herself, but for him. Of course, she couldn’t give away the secret of Karma’s phoenix identity, but there had to be another way to get him help.

  And she’d just ignore that her own finder’s talent had said the only person who could heal Marcus was himself.

  “Are you okay?” Vanessa asked.

  “It’s been a confusing few days, but I’m fine.” For a certain definition of fine, Sadie added to hersel
f as she checked for any vehicles on the road that were paying her too much attention. “I ran into an old…friend who has been keeping me safe. My finder’s talent says he’s the only one who can.”

  “Well, that sounds ominous. How bad is your situation?”

  Sadie laughed briefly, ruefully. “Emotionally, I’m at nuclear threat levels. The old friend is Marcus Aurelius.” At Vanessa’s silence Sadie wondered if she’d need to actually say that Marcus was the ex-lover who’d broken her heart.

  But Vanessa acted as a crucial node in the Minervalle network because of her memory for people and details. “The Senator’s grandson? Whatever happened to him?” The sound of computer keys clicking came over the phone. “There’s nothing on him. It’s like he dumped you and vanished.”

  Dumped was accurate but wince-inducing.

  “He had some troubles of his own. He kept me out of them.” Sadie heard the defensive, protective tone in her voice.

  Vanessa had to have heard it, too. “And now he’s keeping you safe?”

  “Yes.”

  “Is he going to break your heart, again?” That was her friend, sympathetic but keeping things real.

  Sadie thought of Marcus, resigned to dying. Losing him would break her. “I won’t let him,” she said passionately.

  “Oh honey.” Vanessa’s sigh was sympathetic.

  “No, you don’t understand. He—” But if Sadie told Vanessa his story, she’d be breaking his trust. She continued quietly, watching the traffic, scanning for threats, hoping to see Marcus’s griffin form. “He’s a good man. What he did nine years ago, he had reason for.”

  “Some people can justify anything.” Vanessa’s terrifying experiences shaded her voice, coloring it with cynicism and worry.

  If Sadie asked now for Vanessa to put her in contact with a healer who specialized in healing magical trauma—if such even existed—then Vanessa would hit the panic button and activate the Old School network to intervene for Sadie’s sake. They would tear open Marcus’s past and for what? Her own finder talent said that the key to his healing was within him.